When the headmaster of St Alban’s College introduced the 1st quad crew to the school ahead of last weekend’s Gauteng Rowing Championships he reminded them that they have a 13-year unbeaten record to defend. Not that he was putting pressure on them, of course, he said.
They duly went out and extended their winning streak - St Alban’s is without peers in the sculling events in schools rowing - but it made me think about the nature of unbeaten runs, especially coming the day after the seemingly invincible All Blacks surrendered theirs to Ireland. New Zealand’s streak ran for 18 games, over two seasons.
In Joburg school sports we have two that have been going for much longer. St Benedict’s College, back in March, won the boys section of the SA Schools Rowing Championships for the 23rd year in a row, while a few months ago Northcliff were crowned Joburg co-ed schools athletics champions for the 20th consecutive time.
Cleverer people than me have analysed and written about how unbeaten teams manage to sustain their success, and it always has to do with both technical and mental preparation and, probably most importantly, about building a winning culture and sticking to it.
I find the reasons why an unbeaten run eventually ends far more interesting, though. There has been quite a lot written in the past week about how the Irish managed to put a spanner in the All Blacks works. The analyses I have read have to do with over-complacency, selection errors - they replaced the two best locks in world rugby with two loose forwards - and with the customary Irish passion being enhanced this time by the passing of the much-loved Anthony Foley.
The Irish team used the All Black Haka as an opportunity to pay their respects to Foley and they clearly got a bigger lift out of the occasion than their opponents did. Perhaps New Zealand would have been better served by leaving out their usually bone-chilling war cry this time around.
So, how are those schools’ unbeaten runs going to end? Because they are - just about the only certainty in sport is that you are going to lose, eventually.
Elsewhere in this publication I write about how the 70-game winning streak of the St Stithians 1st cricket team was ended by Affies in a T20 game. That one’s easy to explain in terms of the nature of the 20-over game. Cricket purists will tell you it’s a lottery, bearing only a cosmetic resemblance to the proper game, so anything can happen. Including, as in this case, a tail-end batsman taking six almighty swings and connecting with four of them to hit four sixes in a row and win the game.
When speculating on how Northcliff’s athletics run might end you have to remember they had a similar unbeaten record in co-ed schools swimming, and that ended. The answer there was that some of the newly emerging smaller private schools targeted swimming as a sport to market themselves and put time, effort and money into that sport.
It would probably take a similar emphasis on athletics to topple Northcliff, although that would mean concentrating on more than one sport at a time - something schools like Northcliff always do, but the new kids have never done as effectively.
The sunset of Bennies rowing is harder to predict. The rowing people I have spoken to all come back to St Alban’s in the end. The prowess of the Pretoria school in the sculling events - which make up less than half of the standard regatta programme - shows that they have the talent, coaching and systems in place.
And, crucially, they are just a few minutes away from Roodeplaat Dam, the only accessible body of water in Gauteng big enough for proper training purposes.
If they were to expand their participation and start entering the sweep oar events as well, the edge they hold by having the dam to themselves for the hour it takes Joburg schools to negotiate the N1 traffic on training days would probably topple St Benedict’s off their perch.
Not that I’m putting pressure on them.
Independent Media